To price bagels, cost a whole batch, divide by the bagels it makes, add the time it takes to mix, shape, boil, top and bake them, the bag and a share of the oven and rent, and price for the margin you want after card fees. Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fees). Bagels are cheap to make and slow to shape. In the example below, a batch of four dozen uses $8.40 of flour, malt, yeast and toppings, about 18 cents a bagel, but the hour and a half of hands-on work adds 63 cents, so each bagel costs $1 in all. At a 55% margin after 3% card fees, that's $2.38, rounded up to $2.50. A café paying $1.25 leaves 21 cents. Below is a batch's cost, the time, the price, dozens, wholesale, sourdough bagels, and a free calculator.
The short version
- Cost a whole batch: flour, malt, yeast, salt, toppings, and the boil.
- Divide by the bagels the batch really makes.
- Time the hands-on work for the batch: mixing, dividing, shaping, boiling, topping, bagging.
- Add the bag and a share of the oven, power and rent.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − card fees), rounded up to a quarter.
- Shaping is the biggest cost; faster shaping does more for wholesale than cheaper flour.
- TaroStack costs every batch from what you paid for the flour and toppings. More below.
What a batch costs
Passaic Street Bagels, a made-up bagel bakery in Clifton, New Jersey, I use in these examples, makes boiled bagels four dozen at a time, about 4 ounces of dough each:
| A batch of 48 | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| High-gluten flour | 8 lb at $0.70 | $5.60 |
| Barley malt syrup | $0.80 | |
| Yeast and salt | $0.50 | |
| Seeds and toppings | $1.20 | |
| Malt and baking soda for the boil | $0.30 | |
| Ingredients, a batch | $8.40 |
That's 18 cents of ingredients a bagel. Everything bagels and seeded ones cost a few cents more than plain, and filled or cheese-topped bagels more again; price those separately if they sell well.
The time, the bag and the overhead
The batch takes 90 minutes of hands-on work: mixing, dividing, shaping each bagel by hand, boiling, topping, baking and bagging. The overnight rest in the fridge doesn't count. At $20 an hour, that's $30 for the batch, 63 cents a bagel, more than three times the ingredients.
| A bagel | Cost |
|---|---|
| Ingredients | $0.18 |
| Your time | $0.62 |
| Bag share and overhead | $0.20 |
| Full cost | $1.00 |
The shaping is the part that scales worst. A bakery that shapes 48 bagels in 20 minutes instead of 40 takes 14 cents off every bagel's cost, more than all the flour in it. How to put labor into a baked good's cost is in how to compute labor cost in baking.
The price
| Bagel | |
|---|---|
| Full cost | $1.00 |
| Price at a 55% margin after 3% card fees | $2.38 |
| Rounded up to a quarter | $2.50 |
| Left after the cost and fees | $1.42 |
| A dozen at $2.50 each | $30.00 |
| A baker's dozen deal, 13 for $27 | $2.08 each, leaving $1.01 |
A dozen sold below twelve singles brings people back on Saturdays, and still leaves a dollar a bagel. The same arithmetic for a whole bakery menu is in how to price baked goods.
Wholesale to cafés
| Price a bagel | Left after cost and fees |
|---|---|
| $2.50, retail | $1.42 |
| $2.00 | $0.94 |
| $1.25, to a café | $0.21 |
At $1.25, a café's bagel leaves 21 cents, which isn't worth an early delivery. Wholesale works when the café's bagels share a batch you'd make anyway, or at a price closer to $1.75, which leaves 70 cents. How to set wholesale prices is in how to price baked goods for wholesale.
Sourdough bagels
Sourdough bagels use a starter instead of commercial yeast, which costs almost nothing, but take longer: feeding the starter, a longer rise, and more attention. If they add 30 minutes to a batch of 48, that's 21 cents more a bagel, $1.21 in all, and $3 each at the same margin. That's the reason to price them above plain bagels; the calculator shows what your own minutes need. Whether bagels can be baked at home for sale where you live is in how to start a cottage food business.
Get the calculator
Download the bagel pricing calculator. Type what goes into a batch, the bagels it makes, the hands-on minutes, the bag, overhead, your hourly rate, card fees, the margin you want, a wholesale price and a price to test; it works out the full cost of a bagel, the price for your margin rounded up to a quarter, and what each price leaves. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator uses the flour and seed prices you type in, once. Flour is bought by the 50-pound bag and seeds by the pound; when either changes, every bagel's cost changes, and with a dozen flavors and cafés on different prices, keeping the sheet current is a job of its own.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs every batch from what you paid for the flour and toppings.
Recipes costed from real prices. Each bagel is a recipe, so each batch takes the flour, malt and seeds off stock and is costed from what they cost, and flour bought by the bag is used by the pound.
Price rises spotted. The price-creep report shows each supplier's prices over time, so a rise in flour is seen the week it lands, and margins are reported by product and by customer, so a café's bagels show what they really earn.
What you can bake. "What could I make right now" says how many batches the flour and seeds on hand allow, before you promise a café a standing order.
| The job | Calculator | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| What a batch costs | Prices you type | Costed from what you paid |
| Flour going up | Noticed later | Price creep by supplier |
| What a café's bagels earn | Worked out by hand | Margins by customer |
| Enough flour for Saturday? | Check the bags | What could I make right now |
Recipes, costing and price creep are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.